


Little Children Like Moths To A Flame

by airamcg



Category: Alice Nine
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Best Friends, Drama, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, POV Second Person, Psychological Drama, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-06 20:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1871541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airamcg/pseuds/airamcg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The smallest movements of lips. The slightest change in pace of breath. The tiniest quickenings of pulse. Every little synapse of the brain sends out a vibration, a ripple into the world that grows larger and larger until it could be heard. A noise not so white and not so pleasant that normality turns a deaf ear towards it. But you are not so normal; and from him, you learned the beauty of silence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Children Like Moths To A Flame

Summer. The heat is intense during the day, but at night you find yourself hiding under the covers. Shadows dance against the wall and in the dead of night, you could hear them more clearly than before. The voices, they never stop. The pains that never were your own, they scar you over and over again. You scream beyond the limit of your little lungs, but would anyone take heed and listen?

No, no one would. They would never understand and you know it.

 

~*~

 

It was raining the day your parents sent you to the Institution. It was for your own good, they said, the people there were said to specialize in unique cases like yours. You dearly wanted to believe them despite knowing that what you have was not quite a disease. They were too old and too blind to believe a word you say, however, so you had no other choice.

Your steps made no sound as you went through the hallways, a pale hand against the whitewashed wall. On the other, you held your stuffed black dog by the paw. He would not leave your side even if you wanted him to. He said he didn't want you to get lonely, and this place was certainly depressing.

You stopped when the rays of light hit your fair skin and the brightness made you squint. Not too much, though; the Sun-king wore a veil of white tinged with a little grey. When your pupils finally adjusted to the brilliance, a whirlwind of blossoms the color of sunset greeted you and you fell into awe. You didn't even realize that your grip on the dog slackened and he fell to the moist grass while you came close enough to rest your palm against the rough trunk of the fir tree.

"Why hello there." A congenial voice spoke all of the sudden that you almost jumped. A searching gaze casted through the whole yard, until your eyes zeroed in on the stuffed canine limp on the grass as he stared back at you with his shiny button eyes. Was it him?

"Silly, I'm up here."

You threw your head back to peer into the flowery mass above. Your eyes met with a pair of round obsidian eyes that sparkled with the sun. It was a boy, roughly your age. His raven hair failed to blend with the orange as he casually watched you from his perch up the tree. Then he gave you a beam so dazzling that even his eyes chinked into two black lines on his face.

"Wanna come up here, or should I go down?"

Before you could even open your mouth to answer, he jumped off the branch and landed perfectly in front of you. He flashed triumphant pose and grin that completely baffled you.

Up close, you could more clearly see the eccentricities that speckled the boy: A coffee brown highlight on one side of his bangs, the rest of his hair kept black and spiked. A sakura pink shirt too large and untucked, sky blue shorts that came to his knees. His socks were mismatched and looked funny on his mustard yellow shoes.

You couldn't help thinking how mundane you seemed as you looked down on your plain white shirt and grey sweats.

"You're the new kid, right? What's your name?"

You answered him, you were quite certain you did. You felt your lips forming the words as surely as you felt the wind blowing on your face, but the rustling of leaves was the only sound that passed between you and the boy. Immediately, you clutched your throat and wondered what in the world went wrong. Confused, you glared at the boy for an explanation. He merely kept his smile, although there was a peculiar shine in his eyes.

"Not that one." He shook his head, his two-tone bangs swaying with the movement. "They took that away already. Tell me the new one they gave you."

"S-Saga." You studied the grass crushed under your sneakers. It was a name that left an odd taste on your tongue. "'Sa' as sand, 'ga' as ego."

"It has kanji in it? Cool!" You gaped at his reaction, but he just continued on. "I'm Nao. Just N-A-O, Nao."

He offered his hand for a shake. It had some brown smudges all over it, probably from when he climbed up the tree. You let your hand hang on the air for a while in caution and hesitation. You expected him to just grab it without waiting for you, but he didn't until you ventured enough for your palms to touch.

For a moment, your existence seemed less chaotic.

"That wasn't so bad, ne?"

 

~*~

 

You became aware of the high pitched beeping of some apparatus. Loud and fast, as if it was chasing your heartbeat. The pungent scent of chemicals stung your nostrils, making a single drop slip out your touching eyelashes and trail down your cheek. It was only then that you realized you could open your eyes, but the brightness blinded you as soon as you did.

Intense artificial light glared down on you that even after your eyes attempted to adjust, you could only make out the shadows of your surroundings. One shadow was shaped like a man, and he looked down at you from his standing position. Another handed him a needled object that squirted out some drops when handled.

You tried to flail your arms or kick your legs or anything at all to escape them, but all in vain. The shackles were tight on your wrists and your ankles. As you realized the hopelessness of the situation, you could do nothing else but scream and cry and shout and yell in agony and fear. But even that could not give you any release. There was only silence despite your efforts.

"Go back to sleep," droned a hoarse voice above you. "Go back to sleep."

 

~*~

 

The first thing you became aware of was his jovial voice.

"Guess what day it is today!"

"Sunday, right?" you groaned in response as you tried to hide your face under a pillow. He didn't have any of it though, and grabbed the fluffy thing away to reveal your bed head.

"Aww, c'mon. Not like that," came his sing-song chiding, accompanied with pulling you up and away from the softness of the mattress. You grunted out complaints, but made no attempt to go against the way he manhandled you towards the closet. You didn't even bother protesting when he took out a set of mismatched clothes for you as you began to change.

"Don't tell me it's your birthday again?" You peered at him through the collar of your shirt, before pulling it down and making your head bob out. "We just celebrated it last week."

"Hmph, where did the quiet Saga go?" he huffed at you with narrowed eyes and folded arms. "You sure are learning sarcasm too fast."

"I had a good teacher." You finished up and faced him with a hand on your hip. He had his usual smirk and you couldn't help raising an eyebrow at that. "What are you on about?"

As if to answer your question, he grabbed your hand and half-dragged you out of the room. It seemed he'd taken a liking to being in charge of things, especially with you.

"Naaaaaaaoooooooo! Where are we going?"

"A really cool place!"

And he would not tell you anything more than that.

 

~*~

 

It was raining the day your parents sent you in the Institution, and it lasted well into the night. Thunderclaps and the cries of frightened children echoed through the hallways. The staff in whitewashed clothes scurried around as residents complained about the sound of white noise in their heads. They could not pinpoint the source of the paranormal commotion. A truck almost hit an escaping resident a few blocks away. She stumbled away, shaken but unharmed. The slippery streets of the city made a bus slam hard against a concrete block. Three were dead, including the driver. Congested traffic induced heightened tension and flaring tempers. A middle aged socialite started a fist fight with a young father desperate to make ends meet. A teenage gangster mugged an elderly woman on her way home. He left her for the dogs in that alley downtown. Miles away, a little girl screamed for help as her father stripped off her dress. He stifled her sobs with his large hand as he forced himself inside. Pain explodes in your head.

"Make it stop! Make it stop!"

You harshly clutched your ears that fingernails dug deep enough to draw blood, but the voices and sensations would not stop. You writhed in your bed as if convulsing and let out a deafening shriek.

"MAKE IT STOP!!!"

 

~*~

 

Hidden by the fir and ginkgo that stood behind the Institution's main building lied a garden of flowers. He took you there, after sneaking under the noses of the men in whitewashed clothes that casted their sharp eyes around like eagles after prey. You trembled at the very thought of getting caught.

"Don't worry, they won't find us," he assured as the tree trunks begin to close in on the narrow trail you two tread. "Flowers don't tell the secrets they hear."

He continued to lead the way in silence, every so often casting sidelong glances and sloppy smiles at you. The surprisingly cool wind lifted up a few petals and the rustling of leaves that followed accompanied the crunching of grass and twigs underfoot. The rhythmic sound soon took you away into another world. You saw the lines of a colorful symphony. The trees were musicians. The conductor, the wind. Wouldn't that be very pleasant? A forest orchestra.

"Ne, can you still hear the voices from here?"

His voice shook you out of your reverie. It was only then that you realized you had reached your destination. Various flowers surrounded you with a spectrum of colors. Hydrangeas, lilies, foxgloves and heather. Bird-like blossoms of yellow, blue and red-orange. An iris kissed your cheek for a short moment as you moved towards the center of the throng in admiration.

"It's so beautiful!" You spun around to face the one who brought you here, who raised his brows at the expression on your face. Then he looked away and coughed at his fist before rubbing the back of his head. You began to wonder if you've done something out of the ordinary.

"You haven't answered my question," he said, still without looking at you. You were standing a little distance from him, but you could distinctly see his ears blend with the red roses behind him. Interesting.

"It's peaceful here. I can actually hear the birds chirping!"

You gave him your best beam, which was a notch shy of the midday sun in brilliance. He returned the gesture, but somehow there seemed to be something off. He still would not look at your eyes.

"But you're really something, aren't you? Hearing emotions..." he trailed off for a moment, then took a quick glance at you and shrugged. "Mine's not so cool."

"Don't say that! I could only hear this kind of quiet when I'm with you."

"Well if it's like that..."

He sort of shrugged again and turned towards a group of odd-looking roses. They didn't look like real roses and they glowed a translucent hue of blue. Gently, he cupped one and brought it close to his face. It absorbed all of his attention, and he absorbed all of yours. You tried to decipher the seeming melancholic air about his usual cheerful demeanor through closely observing his face, especially those large obsidian eyes. But even his eyes told you nothing of his thoughts. Maybe flowers were really the only ones that knew of his secrets.

"Frozen tears bloom into roses."

"What?"

His words were lost to the wind and the great booming sound that reverberated through the whole area. Almost immediately, you searched the skies for the source.

"Fireworks?"

"Happy birthday, Saga!"

Dumbfounded, you stared at Nao for his preposterous comment. He merely raised his brows as if questioning whether something's wrong.

"Nao, my birthday was last month."

"I know."

And he did. The return of his mischievous grin proved that. It was as if the gloom about his aura a while ago simply disappeared into thin air.

"You planned this, didn't you?"

For some reason you could not quite grasp, he laughed at you. But there was no malice or insulting intent there. Even if you can't hear his emotions, you knew. You knew because he took you into his arms and laughed some more. Pure, mirthful laughter that overpowered the din of fireworks in the background.

"You caught me!" He paused for a moment and took in the positions both of you were in, and chuckled. "Or I caught you, rather."

"I don't get you at all."

"Think of it this way: something died in us when we first came to this place, but now... don't you think it's like something new is born?"

Death and birth. When you first came to this place, you felt as if you were forcibly torn away from everything familiar and exiled to an alien place of whitewashed walls that failed to mask the truth of the happenings within. White as your pale skin, you blended with the background and no one noticed your existence until Nao called you from his perch up the fir tree.

The petals got stuck in your hair and the red orange of the blossoms got stuck in your memory. It marked a beginning for you, and it seemed to have marked a beginning for Nao as well. For someone so placeless and alone because of a uniqueness that was seen as accursed and necessary for correction, you finally found a place to call home.

You tugged at his shirt and pulled him closer to you.

"A birthday, huh?"

You could feel his warmth through the thin clothes typical of summer. You were more aware of it than the Sun-king's rays that slipped through his overcast veil of white and gray. When he whispered his reply, you were more aware of it than the booms of fireworks over your little heads.

"Yeah, it's our birthday."

 

~*~

 

Summer. The heat is intense during the day, but at night you still find yourself hiding under the covers. Shadows dance against the wall and in the dead of night, you could hear them more clearly than before. The voices, they never stop. The pains that never were your own, they scar you over and over again. You scream beyond the limit of your little lungs, but would anyone take heed and listen?

A cool arm wraps around your waist from behind, and brushing against your ear, whispers of hushed consolation. He may never understand it wholly, but you know that at least he tries.

Life has always been filled with noise and pain, but you fall asleep in the peace found in his warmth.

Finally, everything is quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> first posted in my livejournal in 10 June 2009.
> 
> originally written for AliceInFiction Week 9 (fireworks blooming) and Tragic_Ennui prompt 15 (and finally, everything was quiet) challenges


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